It has been a pleasure to work with Nick over the
years. I hope you find the interview useful.

—Matt Ball

There are thousands and thousands
of vegan and advocacy books out there. What made
you decide it was worth your time to write Change
of Heart?

You’re
right, there are a number of books that have been
written on how to organize to create change for animals
(or social change in general). And while a few of
these books are very helpful, one thing that was always
missing was any sort of hard science about what works
and what doesn’t when it comes to persuading others.
Animal advocates often find themselves in disagreement
with one another over what messages and approaches
are most effective. For example, should we use graphic
imagery of animal suffering or should we use images
of cute, happy animals? Should we encourage people
to make small changes and progress to larger changes,
or should we encourage them to make large changes
(such as veganism) from the start? And what types
of messages are most convincing in getting the public
to go veg?

Ask ten animal activists these questions and you’ll
get some very different answers, with each person
having arguments and anecdotes to support their point
of view. What I wanted to do with Change of Heart
is to cut through all these personal opinions
and find out what the scientific record shows. Researchers
in the fields of psychology, sociology, communication
studies, and a few other areas have conducted tens
of thousands of studies on what does and does not
help in persuading others to do what we’d like them
to do. By taking their results and applying them to
our animal advocacy work, we can become a lot more
effective and save many more lives. Change of
Heart is meant to be a psychology primer for
activists, a road map of how people’s minds operate
and what we need to do to persuade them to live more
compassionately.

In your book, especially the first
portion, you speak extensively (and convincingly)
against the attitude of “do something, do
anything!” From your knowledge of psychology
and sociology, why do you think this is such a common
(and often intractable) problem, especially within
the animal advocacy community?

Great question. A lot of animal advocates do feel
that as long as they are doing something, anything
to help animals, they can feel good about themselves
and can rest assured that they are doing the right
thing. I certainly felt the same way for the first
couple years of my time as an animal advocate: what’s
important was that I was standing up for animals,
adding my voice to those who were condemning circuses,
fur, animal testing and so forth. What’s important
was that I was on the right side.

But creating social change is not that easy. Really
doing good is not that easy. As an analogy, think
about a parent raising his or her first child. Would
they be a “good parent” if they just stood
by the child’s crib holding a sign for an hour each
week telling the child that they loved it? Of course
not. To be a good parent, they need to take the time
to read books on child nutrition and child psychology,
and learn all the details and complexities of how
to raise a happy, healthy child. Most of us, placed
in the role of parent, would be willing to put that
time and effort in.

We need to be just as thoughtful about our work to
create change for animals. In other words, we need
to be focused on results. We need to realize that
the important thing is not how much we say we love
the child, it’s how the child turns out. The important
thing with animal advocacy is not that we’re on the
right side, or that we’re doing “something”
to help animals, the important thing is what actual
results we’ve had for animals. How many animals have
been spared a lifetime of suffering as a result of
our own personal work over the past few months? How
many have been saved from death? And, is there a way
that we could be helping numerically more animals?

The problem with slogans like “do something,
do anything,” “practice random acts of kindness,”
etc., is that they are completely focused on how we
feel, and they completely ignore what’s happening
in the world around us. If we’re living out the phrase
“do something, do anything,” we’re letting
ourselves be steered by our self-centered desires
to feel good about ourselves. It’s profoundly disrespectful
to those who are suffering right now. To a pig confined
in a filthy gestation crate, it doesn’t make a difference
in her life whether or not you “do something,
do anything.” It only makes a difference in her
life if you create an actual change – by getting someone
to stop eating meat, getting a company to do away
with gestation crates, etc. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote,
“The revolution is not a question of virtue,
but of effectiveness.”

Bottom line: if we’re really concerned with helping
animals (and I think all of us reading this are),
let’s redouble our efforts to stay focused on RESULTS,
and doing the work that will create the most real-world
results for animals.

I, too, spent a number of years
in the “do something, do anything” mindset.
Another
shortcoming of mine in previous years was my
insistence in promoting a “vegan first, vegan
only” message, with the rationalization being
that only veganism was the full statement against
all exploitation.

In retrospect, though, I was more concerned with
promoting my personal views, rather than doing the
most good for the animals. Or in terms of Jack Norris’
comment, “We want a vegan world, not a vegan
club,” I wanted an exclusive vegan club of
only those fully committed and indoctrinated.

You cover the implications of this attitude in
terms of booklet titles here, as well as ways the
relevant research indicates we can be more effective.
Can you discuss other areas where people’s
personal dogma and sense of identity / self-worth
get in the way of doing the most good for the animals,
as well as how we can use the available research
to get past our personal beliefs and desires?

We might think that the only reason we are animal
advocates is because we altruistically want to help
animals, but that’s not true. Our motivation is probably
in part a desire to express ourselves; a desire to
feel a sense of belonging (by working with or talking
to like-minded people); and a desire to feel good
about ourselves. All of these things are an important
part of being a happy, healthy person. But there are
times when they can conflict with doing the most good
for animals.

Take self-expression, for example. Just expressing
our opinions – be it in a letter to a congressperson,
shouting at a protest, typing on a blog, or by passing
out a booklet – doesn’t in and of itself magically
create change for animals. Some methods do create
real-world change, some methods do very little. So
we have to ask ourselves, is our goal to just voice
our opinion in the way we find most enjoyable? Or
is it to create the most real-world change?

Our desire to express ourselves can also affect the
physical appearance and style of dress we choose.
There is plenty of research documenting how our appearance
impacts our persuasiveness. Studies have found for
example that people who look attractive (by conventional
standards of beauty) are paid more, more likely to
be elected to political office than less-attractive
candidates, get off with lighter sentences in court,
are more likely to get petition signatures when petitioning,
are more likely to receive help when they ask for
it, etc. Studies have also found that people are more
likely to help, believe, and work with those who look
similar to them. Therefore if we dress and look like
our target audience, and try to appear more conventionally
attractive, we’ll be more effective in our animal
advocacy work. Here again we see a conflict: do I
as an advocate for animals dress and look the way
I want to because I enjoy that form of self-expression;
or do I dress and look in the way that’s going to
help the most animals? Boil it down and you’re really
asking yourself, “Is being able to look the way
I prefer to look worth the lives of thousands of animals?”

Let me also address the desire to feel good about
ourselves. As you note, rigid adherence to vegan dogma
and a desire for personal purity will interfere with
our ability to create actual change for animals. There
are a small number of animal advocates who are opposed
to any form of advocacy that doesn’t have what they
consider to be a strict vegan message. These folks
think, for example that using the term “vegetarian”
in outreach materials is bad, that welfare laws protecting
millions of animals are bad, that encouraging people
to reduce meat consumption is bad, etc.

“Veganism,” they argue, “has to be
the moral baseline. If we advocate for anything less,
the public will become complacent and they’ll think
it’s okay to continue eating animal products as long
as they eat less, or eat free-range.”

This is a hollow argument on a number of levels.
For one thing, it doesn’t even stand up to its own
internal logic. Consider the fact that 120 million
animals are killed by our cars each year, 40 million
by our cell phone towers, and at bare minimum 60 million
die a slow death of pesticide poisoning from our non-organic
food crops (these numbers are for the US). Moreover,
billions of animals won’t get to even be born because
of our population growth and our consumerism which
poisons the environment. Someone on the next rung
up the purity ladder could say, “Veganism, not
driving, not using a cell phone, eating only organic
food, not reproducing, and buying virtually nothing
has to be the moral baseline. If we advocate anything
less – such as just veganism – the public will become
complacent and they’ll think it’s okay to continue
killing animals and denying their ability to live
just so as long as they aren’t eating animal products.”

Leaving that internal contradiction aside, psychology
and sociology research from the past fifty years makes
clear that having flexibility in our advocacy – as
opposed to taking a “vegan or nothing” approach
– will make us more effective. For example, the research
is very clear that if we want people to make a large
change, we’ll usually be more successful by first
getting them to agree to a smaller change and then
later encouraging them to make the larger change.
This is called getting our “foot in the door,”
and a meta-analysis of over 900 studies found that
by getting our foot in the door first with a smaller
request, we’ll be overall about 15% more effective
at getting people to agree to our larger goal, such
as going vegan.

Communication researchers have also widely studied
what they call “message discrepancy,” which
is how different a speaker’s message is from the audience’s
current belief. Researchers are interested in finding
out which message will create the most attitude and
behavior change in an audience: a message that is
only slightly different than the audience’s current
belief, a message that is moderately different than
their current belief, or a message that is extremely
different than their current belief. In a nutshell,
it is the moderately different messages that researchers
have found create the most attitude and behavior change.
Suggestions like “have a meatless meal once a
week” might be too minimal, and encouragements
like “you should go vegan” are too different
from what the general public currently does to create
a lot of behavior change. A message somewhere in the
middle of these should be more effective, create more
change in people’s diets, and thereby help more farmed
animals.

Lastly, research on minority influence has found
that those holding a minority opinion are less effective
in persuading the public to agree with them if they
hold a completely rigid viewpoint. Having some flexibility,
and occasionally agreeing with the majority, makes
those with a minority opinion more successful in spreading
their belief. As we vegans are greatly in the minority,
this lesson certainly applies to us and our work.

So again, and in summary, we face that question:
is our goal as animal advocates to express ourselves
as accurately as possible, and to feel good about
our purity of message? Or is our goal to change the
public’s behavior as much as possible, and consequently
help as many animals as possible? The research record
makes clear that in general we can’t have both.

Given everything you’ve learned
in your research, how has your activism changed?
What tools have you found most effective at persuading
people to change their views and habits?

The biggest lesson that I’ve learned from my research
is to never assume I know what type of message is
going to work best in getting people to make a change
(like going vegetarian or vegan). People – including
all of us animal advocates – think and behave in a
lot of really illogical ways. Writing Change of
Heart helped me see some of the patterns, which
has already come in handy in making The Humane League’s
outreach work more effective.

The most important thing an animal advocate can do
to be as effective as possible is to find the issues
and approaches where they can create the most change
for animals for the smallest amount of time and money
invested. Getting to that point means working through
some of the internal psychological barriers we’ve
talked about already. It also means paying attention
to what a variety of groups and individual activists
are doing, and considering the number of animals that
each person and each group’s work is helping. Overall,
I think one of the most effective things we can be
doing is getting both information and – very importantly
– resources on how to make a change into people’s
hands, on their computer screens, and so forth. I
think that VO’s
booklets; vegetarian
starter kits; and videos like MFA’s new Farm
to Fridge are some of the most powerful tools
we animal advocates have for changing individual behavior.

That being said, it’s important that in these types
of materials and in talking with people we use the
messages that will most effectively persuade people
to make a change. That’s where Change of Heart comes
in. The tools I talk about in the book can make us
10, 20, maybe 30% more effective in the work that
we’re doing (which will mean many lives spared). To
give an example, social norms messages – where we
essentially say “most people/lots of people are
doing this, so you should too” – are extremely
powerful. Research has found that in many cases they
are more powerful than direct advocacy messages (such
as “please recycle to protect the environment,”
etc.). For your summer outreach at the Warped Tour,
Vegan Outreach now prints special booklets that feature
popular vegetarian musicians on the front and back
cover. As far as I understand, using this social norms
message on the cover – as opposed to leading off with
a “protect animals from cruelty message”
– has resulted in a lot more Guide to Cruelty-Free Eating requests
and likely many more vegetarians created. THL is also in the process (and
admittedly we’re late to the game on this) of getting Facebook
like buttons on our vegetarian resource websites,
both to help spread the word and also to use the power
of social norms to help spread vegetarianism on Facebook
(“Oh look, Betty just ordered a vegetarian starter
kit. I guess vegetarianism is becoming more popular,
maybe I should get one too.”).

Getting commitments from people is another very powerful
tool. I saw Rory Freedman (coauthor of Skinny
Bitch) speak once and at the end she asked any
non-veg members of the audience to make a “pinkie
pledge” then and there to try going veg or vegan
for a month. On the surface that may seem kind of
silly, but in fact there’s a ton of research that
makes clear that getting these sort of commitments
– be they verbal, written, public, or group commitments
– makes people much more likely to follow through
on a behavior change. So I’m trying to find ways to
work that into my outreach work more. One example
is that we’re working with an app developer (Symbiotic
Software – check out their animal advocacy apps already
on the market, all free) to create a vegetarian starter
kit app, and the first thing it will do is encourage
the user to make some type of pledge for how often
they will try eating veg.

One last example for now: HSUS and Farm Sanctuary
(along with other groups) just launched their ballot
initiative to ban battery cages, veal crates and gestation
crates in Washington State. With previous ballot initiatives
their campaign sites included a “Fact vs. Myth”
page to counter industry group talking points about
why a ban on these practices would be bad. However
research suggests that these types of presentations
often lead the public to incorrectly remember a number
of the false statements as true. So with this current
initiative, they’ve switched over to a FAQ page (http://humanewa.com/frequently-asked-questions)
that simply gives the facts and chooses not to repeat
the myths, even to dispel them. A switch like this
certainly isn’t going to make or break their ballot
initiative, but this very simple switch in approach
should make more Washingtonians better informed about
the facts of the issue.

Imagine a relatively perfect world,
where all animal advocates and vegans have read
your book and adopted your views. Under this best-case
scenario, how do you see society evolving over time?
IOW, what is your optimistic view of the future?

It’s really hard to say. I do think that if all animal
advocates and vegans put the research discussed in
Change of Heart into action, we as a movement
would gain ground much more quickly. I think we’d
all be focusing on the issues where we can do the
most good (primarily farm animal issues), and methodically
making small but important improvements in our tactics,
messaging, and general approach. I do think that the
percentage of vegans, vegetarians and semi-vegetarians
is going to continue rising for a while; I do think
that we will see bans on the worst factory farming
practices; and I do think we’ll see strengthening
of all types of welfare laws and increased general
social concern for protecting animals. I also think
some fringe uses of animals will be banned or phased
out over time (like animals in circuses), and that
eventually technological advances will lead to a sharp
reduction in animal testing and (when in vitro meat
works out) meat consumption. I think the research
in Change of Heart can help speed up some
of these processes and save more animals more quickly.

That being said, I’m not particularly optimistic
that human beings are going to voluntarily change
their lifestyles enough to prevent serious environmental
breakdown and the harm that will cause and is already
causing, at least in the short term, for animals (particularly
wild ones). Ultimately it’s not just our diet but
our whole consumption-heavy way of living and our
industrialized society that hurts animals. Billions
of animals suffer and die in factory farms each year,
but many also die from other human activities and
billions more will not be able to be born because
we’ve taken over and decimated so much of the land.
So I’m optimistic that change will happen for the
animals in terms of our use of them for food, clothing
and so forth, but not very optimistic about the
situation for animals from the wider perspective of
industrial civilization as a whole.

But that’s a somewhat separate issue. None of us can
predict the future, and even if some catastrophic
climate change happens down the line, that doesn’t
mean we should ignore the suffering going on right
now, suffering that we can prevent. So that being
said, let’s get leafleting!